Romney may have been aggressive, but he was polite, and always a gentleman. He wasn’t overbearing and didn’t come off like an unhinged, condescending crank, like Biden did for this entire debate, laughing, sneering and mugging during all of Ryan’s answers – even on serious issues like Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran. What was that all about? Romney was fighting for equal time in a debate where Obama was allowed four minutes more time. Biden was merely fighting. Chris Wallace said “I’ve Never Seen a Debate Where one Candidate Was So Disrespectful”.He got a minute more time than Ryan who was interrupted at nearly every turn, either by Biden or by the moderator – the two of them seemed at times to be tag teaming him.

In spite of that, Ryan remained calm, winning easily on debate style, and holding his own on debate substance in the face of the blizzard of lies coming from Biden – a problem Sarah Palin also encountered back in 2008..

Dana Perino quipped:

Overheard at the pinnochio factory, "Hey, we're gonna need some more wood for the morning's fact checks!"

Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan were the two candidates on stage at Thursday’s vice presidential debate, but a third character emerged: Joe Biden’s laugh, which didn’t escape the notice of tweeting politicos. (And led, of course, to at least three satirical Twitter accounts: Laughing Joe Biden, Biden Smirk, and yet another Laughing Joe Biden.)

Not a crushing victory, but a victory nonetheless — the sitting VP was bested by the challenger.

So Romney passed the Threshold test — spectacularly — and Ryan passed it as well.

And in both debates, they won.

Alex Castellantos on CNN had a point: The post-debate buzz will be about Biden’s buffoonish mugging.

I hate to say this, but as I said in the liveblog, Biden’s Mission Number One was to reassure and re-energize the base. He did that. He at least stopped some Democrats from defecting to Romney, or deciding not to vote.

And see – this is why some people think Allahpunditand Ace are the same person:

I expected “table-pounding atmospherics” from Biden but I didn’t expect him to act like a total jackhole for fully 90 minutes. Give him credit for knowing his target audience, though: His task tonight was to get the left excited again after Obama fell into a semi-coma in Denver, and evincing utter disdain for Ryan — grimacing, shouting, laughing inappropriately, constantly interrupting, the total jackhole experience — is just what the doctor ordered. He might have irritated independents and undecideds, but probably not so much that it’ll change people’s votes. The Democrats needed someone to go out there and clown for liberals, and if there’s one thing this guy knows, it’s clowning.

Vice President Joe Biden claimed that the administration wasn’t aware of requests for more security in Libya before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi during Thursday night’s debate, contradicting two State Department officials and the former head of diplomatic security in Libya.

“We weren’t told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there,” Biden said.

In fact, two security officials who worked for the State Department in Libya at the time testified Thursday that they repeatedly requested more security and two State Department officials admitted they had denied those requests.

Biden try to explain away the Obama administration’s pro-abortion assault on Catholics, evangelicals and other religious groups and businesses.

“With regard to the assault on the Catholic church, let me make it absolutely clear, no religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy Hospital, any hospital, none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact,” Biden falsely claimed.

“Now, I’ve got to take issue with the Catholic church and religious liberty,” Ryan retorted. “Why would they keep — why would they keep suing you? It’s a distinction without a difference.”

That’s all Ryan was able to get in before he was cut off. Shhhhh!!!!

The mandate compels religious employers to pay for and refer women for abortion-causing drugs, birth control, contraception and sterilizations.

The left has tried to turn the right’s objection to this into the phoney Republican War on Women™.

UPDATE:

Like I said, Biden’s smirking and sneering got panned by almost everybody:

We’re about thirty minutes into the debate and already Vide President Joe Biden is receiveing pretty tough reviews for his bizarre smiling and smirking as debate moderator Martha Raddatz talks about issues as serious as Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

In 2000, Al Gore was just being a smug jerk trying to rattle George W. Bush. Gore also probably thought he was off-camera. Biden was obviously trying to rattle Ryan, but he also knew the camera would be on him, so other than hoping to distract the audience so they wouldn’t hear Ryan’s superior arguments, I have no idea what this debate game-plan was intended to accomplish.

My guess is that Team Obama simply didn’t expect moderator Martha Raddatz (who might be the worst debate moderator in history) to open things with a serious topic like foreign policy — and this is where Biden got in trouble, even with left-wingers like Tom Brokaw…

“By the way, they talk about this great recession like it fell out of the sky–like, ‘Oh my goodness, where did it come from?’” Biden said. “It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, at the same time, put a prescription drug plan on the credit card, a trillion dollar tax cut for the very wealthy.”

Then Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”

This was such an obvious, blatant lie. Ryan’s been in Washington long enough to know the truth. Why did he get Biden get away with it? The day after fact checks are not where the action is. You have to call them out on their lies when you have the chance, or most people will never know the truth.

Pundits and news anchors are expressing post-debate shock at how smirky, condescending and arrogant Vice President Joe Biden was tonight. They buzzed on Twitter at his “malarkey” rebuke of Paul Ryan’s foreign policy criticism.

But this is all old, tired recycled behavior and rhetoric from the last election cycle. Remember? Go back and read my VP debate thread from 2008. It was titled: Sarah vs. Smirky. Go back to 2008, when Biden derided Sarah Palin for her “malarkey” about Bill Ayers.

You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious. You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard. You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what your opponent is saying.

That’s why Vice President Joe Biden didn’t win the one and only debate last night with his Republican rival, Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan.

In fact, though Ryan had several weak moments—one of them was on Syria—the only conceivable takeaway from the veep debate was Biden’s out of control conduct. It will be long remembered—and not favorably.

There’s one person who should be delighted with Biden. That’s Al Gore. He had the honor of having delivered the most over the top and weird performance in a presidential campaign debate when he sighed and frowned and acted frustrated in his first debate with George W. Bush in 2000. Now Biden has taken that crown—or dunce cap—from Gore.

Finally, via Twitchy, the Tweet of the night, as far as I’m concerned:

Proverbs 29:9 "If a wise person debates with a fool,
the fool rages and scoffs, and there is no peace."
That about sums it up.
#VPDebate

When Biden was in the Senate and the upper-body sent out “non-binding letters supporting Israel, Biden support was missing:

November 2001, Bond/Schumer Letter Urging President Not to Meet with Arafat until the Violence Ends, 89 Signers: Sen. Biden did not sign this letter urging President Bush not to meet with Arafat until Palestinian violence ceased. The letter had 89 signers.

March 2004, Schumer-Hatch-Clinton-Smith Letter Urging Kofi Annan to Reverse Support for ICJ Hearings on the Security Fence, 79 Signers: Sen. Biden did not sign this letter urging Kofi Annan to reverse support for the International Court of Justice Hearings on the Security fence which ultimately had 79 signers.

The good thing was that Ryan was able to make his points quickly and efficiently. The bad thing was that he occasionally looked like a deer in the headlights. I understand that this look reflected his amazement at Joe’s behavior, his shock at Joe’s bald-faced lies, and his frustration that both Joe and debate moderator Martha Raddatz kept cutting him off and giving the floor to the crazy uncle. Still, I wish he hadn’t been such a polite Midwesterner.

Thinking about it, though, Ryan may have done just the right thing. While the base probably found Joe’s performance exciting and emotionally honest, I suspect that millions of Americans did not appreciate that Joe made a mockery of a ritual performance that is meant to enhance the honor of the presidential office and to give voters an opportunity to compare the two parties. If people were actually comparing the two debaters, Ryan was an attractive, polite, stable, normal, well-informed young man. Joe was the bloviating, obnoxious drunk at the bar who had grabbed Ryan by his lapel and wouldn’t let go. You could practically see Ryan’s hair melt from the noxious odors wafting out from behind Joe’s peculiarly whitened dentures.

Why let a little detail like congressional testimony under oath get in the way of a (to the administration and it’s sycophants) plausible story? Of course the film that no one in the world had ever seen (except, apparently, by some admin voyeur) was the cause of major riots throughout the muslim world (as if they needed an excuse for boorish behavior anyway – it just comes naturally to them, like scratching your behind when it itches) and killed at least four Americans.

I really hope this administration sticks to its storylines for this and several other blatant lies (like in “F & F”) because as every day passes, more and more “undecideds” are seeing what grandiose and blatant liars not only Obama and Biden are, but nearly every jackass that has anything to do with them, too. (Nazi, Dingy and D. Swastika Schultz come immediately to mind in that regard.)

You don’t win a debate with easily debunked lies and extreme boorish behavior that excites no one but the base. Sorry – Ryan won that one on both style and substance. What most undecided low information voters remember most is Biden’s buffoonish behavior – and that’s also what most the pundits are talking about.

As you may know, I live in a very blue area of a purplish state. There is a diner near my house where during breakfast hours you can hear plenty of political talk. I purposely went to breakfast there this morning and the morning after the Romney/Obama debate. The difference was striking. All mopey and angry last week, all happy and ready to go out for GOTV efforts this weekend. That was Biden’s job last night. He accomplished it. There have been calls going out for people to do canvassing in CT, not by the state party, but by OFA. CT shouldn’t be an issue at all for them. He won by 23 four years ago.

Very few people are going to decide on a VP candidate. Everyone has known that Biden is a gaffe machine, if it didn’t stop people four years ago, it isn’t going to stop them this year. Obama is young man in terms of the natural span of life.

I think his behavior was planned out and he executed it just as they wanted. That is why I think he won by small margin. I was with 40 conservative activists watching the debate, most thought that Ryan’s performance was sub-par. They didn’t like Biden at all, but they felt Ryan was not aggressive enough to get his points across.

I was watching the dials on CNN last night during the debate, Biden got high marks many times. Especially on abortion, which both surprised and saddened me.

I have been of the belief for more than a year had Romney gotten the nomination it would mean four more years of Obama. It has only been in the last ten days or so that I have realized he may just pull this off. Which is why I am parking myself in Ohio every weekend for the duration. If Romney can get Ohio, I think we will be done with Obamanation.

Ryan was a perfect but too nice gentleman at times. He should of went for the juglar on the illegal fly overs in Libya; the calling for security weeks in advance of 9/11 and that security detail had been moved out knowing the miltants were infiltrated by al qaeda. Despite that the Muslim Brotherhood has always been Nazi supported when Hitler came to power. They created Hamas, a terrorists organization and Egypt is now carrying Nazi and bring back the ovens signs, persecuting Copts and burning their Churches. Most of the militants in Libya, Egypt and Syria and elsewhere are also paid mercanaries-just who is paying them?. Maybe Ryan knew this and I felt he should of let the public know just who obama is supporting. And why; because obama is helping the islamic world to create to a global caliphate with Shariah Law . Seems Assad, and Gadafi were not fundamentalist enough and of course Mubarak and Turkey were friendly to the west and Israel. But I would not consider Turkey an ally any more since obama came in office. I would of like to hear Ryan say what Rep Allen West said; move all of our people out, close down their emabassies here in the US and cut off all funding.

I know also that the troops want to stay and establish some strong leadership in Afghan and Iraq and I know with the right kind of leadership they can continue to make progress fighting the Taliban and Al Qeada and win. But, I will have to apologize to them that there will ever be real freedom in an islamic country. With most of our “career oriented” commanders and our usurper-in-chief and his dastardly new ROEs, we are just making them sacrifices on the PC altar of TROP.

There’s a difference in “accomplishing what you set out to do” – in Biden’s case, animating his left-wing base – and actually winning a debate on the merits. Nobody disputes that his buffoonish behavior was tonic for extremists. But how is that “winning”?….It turned off the people in the middle they need to win over. And what most people are talking about today, is Biden’s demeanor — not any of the points he made.

Ryan accomplished what he set out to do, as well. Sure, there were some missed opportunities, but he easily passed the VP test. He proved that he has the intellect, gravitas and class needed for the position – all qualities Biden lacks.